Old 04-23-2013, 04:30 PM   #1
peter5992
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Default Midi technology in the year 1986

Fyi, a fascinating video from the Computer Archives about the state of things in 1986:

http://archive.org/details/MIDIMusi1986

Looking at this it is pretty mind blowing to realize how far we have come.
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Old 04-24-2013, 12:41 AM   #2
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I recorded a bunch of stuff in Nashville in the early eighties using an MT32 and the |Alesis Datadisk.
It worked.

MIDI is what it is and for those of us that actually persevered with it back then, it was pretty dern good.
We did a bunch of live shows with the MT32/datadisk combination and never once had a problem.
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Old 04-24-2013, 05:56 AM   #3
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even that little apple computer has scoring editor (at 5:20 and 16:30)
great video.. thanks for sharing

Last edited by heda; 04-24-2013 at 06:11 AM.
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Old 04-24-2013, 11:12 AM   #4
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Heh heh, I'll bet there are more than a few Reaperite youngin's that have never even seen a 5-1/4" floppy.

My first sequencer was Voyetra Sequencer Plus Gold that I used on an IBM and only had "8 ticks per quarter note". That was the early to mid 80s. By the end of the 80s it had improved to "48 or maybe even 96 ticks per quarter note".
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Old 04-24-2013, 11:32 AM   #5
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Heh heh, I'll bet there are more than a few Reaperite youngin's that have never even seen a 5-1/4" floppy.

My first sequencer was Voyetra Sequencer Plus Gold that I used on an IBM and only had "8 ticks per quarter note". That was the early to mid 80s. By the end of the 80s it had improved to "48 or maybe even 96 ticks per quarter note".
I've used many 5-1/4" floppy discs but I never saw one in a sampler as in the video
Voyetra Sequencer was my first sequencer too !!
http://www.turtlebeach.com/support/files/315/

I've found a video of someone using it in a dosbox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_p4IgBD5oE
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Old 04-24-2013, 11:44 AM   #6
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I've used many 5-1/4" floppy discs but I never saw one in a sampler as in the video
Voyetra Sequencer was my first sequencer too !!
http://www.turtlebeach.com/support/files/315/

I've found a video of someone using it in a dosbox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_p4IgBD5oE
Wow, heda, thankyou so much, what a mind blower, heh heh brought back a lot of memories and what a treat.
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Old 04-24-2013, 03:44 PM   #7
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Wow, heda, thankyou so much, what a mind blower, heh heh brought back a lot of memories and what a treat.
thanks to you for reminding me about it heh... I'm nostalgic today...
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Old 04-25-2013, 11:15 AM   #8
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Check out graphics and interface tech from 1963: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOZqRJzE8xg
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Old 04-25-2013, 04:23 PM   #9
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Check out graphics and interface tech from 1963: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOZqRJzE8xg
Thanks brainwreck, that was interesting. Humm, 1963, heh heh, I think I had my first 2-track stereo ampex tape recorder by then.

The first actual computer I'd ever seen was at an AES convention in LA in 1973, at least I think it was 73, I attended quite a few AES shows from the late 60s and through out the 70s. In the back of my mind it was a company from Colorado showing the very first digital audio editing system. I remember it being the highlight of the show with a lot of people gathered around.

At any rate it was ghastly expensive and I don't think I ever heard any more about them.
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Old 04-25-2013, 05:34 PM   #10
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Thanks brainwreck, that was interesting. Humm, 1963, heh heh, I think I had my first 2-track stereo ampex tape recorder by then.

The first actual computer I'd ever seen was at an AES convention in LA in 1973, at least I think it was 73, I attended quite a few AES shows from the late 60s and through out the 70s. In the back of my mind it was a company from Colorado showing the very first digital audio editing system. I remember it being the highlight of the show with a lot of people gathered around.

At any rate it was ghastly expensive and I don't think I ever heard any more about them.
You bring up a good point. In a lot of ways, the computer technology of today isn't that much further along than 50 years ago. Miniaturization of transistors and lower costs of manufacturing have allowed that old tech to become so pervasive.
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Old 04-26-2013, 10:06 AM   #11
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Originally Posted by peter5992 View Post
Fyi, a fascinating video from the Computer Archives about the state of things in 1986:

http://archive.org/details/MIDIMusi1986

Looking at this it is pretty mind blowing to realize how far we have come.
nice link, thanks for the vid
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Old 04-26-2013, 12:21 PM   #12
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Last year I sold two Yamaha DMP7's for $50 a piece - I paid just over $4000.00 a piece for them when I bought them!
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Old 04-26-2013, 02:02 PM   #13
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Cubase... 1.0 for Windows (MIDI only):
Hello Cubase 1.0 Greetings from 2013 Reaper forum. You were amazing Midi items for the win!
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Old 04-26-2013, 02:39 PM   #14
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Those were the days...
I've started then with Cakewalk for Dos and here is my still working Wincake with notation ! (Cakewalk Professional for Windows 1.05)
Just Midi. No Audio.

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Old 04-26-2013, 03:40 PM   #15
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Those were the days...
I've started then with Cakewalk for Dos and here is my still working Wincake with notation ! (Cakewalk Professional for Windows 1.05)
Just Midi. No Audio.

I had Cakewalk for DOS also, and before that I think it was some Roland program -- can't remember the name. I remember when I first hooked up my MIDI cables to my keyboard thinking something like "Yeah, this'll work" and lo and behold it did! It was amazing to see those notes show up on the computer screen and even more amazing to hear them played back exactly as I'd played them in! This was in 1986.

I also had Voyetra Sequencer Plus, and one of the cool things about it IIRC was that you could loop all or part of one track while the others continued to play linearly. I don't think I've seen that since in a "linear" sequencer.

-Susan
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Old 04-26-2013, 05:32 PM   #16
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wow! That brings back memories. It's taken us a lot of years to just add color It looks like it's all there doesn't it? Except of course audio.
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Old 04-27-2013, 02:53 AM   #17
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And of course Bars n Pipes Pro on the Amiga 500 predated all of the above. I think Pro24 was one of the earliest Steinberg efforts on the Atari ST and that DID predate BPP.
Amazing how we got anything done back then, isn`t it? (grin)

And bear in mind that both Alesis and Roland had MIDI sequencing hardware and sound modules around way before all that. Yamaha too, IIR. Possiblty Akai?

Bit rusty on the history of MIDI tbh
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Old 04-27-2013, 06:09 AM   #18
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Vintage MIDI Sequencers
http://tweakheadz.com/vintage-sequencers/

Early sequencers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_s...rly_sequencers
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Old 04-30-2013, 11:59 AM   #19
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not pro24 was the first but the sequential circuits one for the commodore 64
predated it and steinberg themselves had one too for the c64 , by the way
by 1986 we used 3.5 inch floppys and some early 20 mb harddiscs allready
and cdrom was out by 1985 for the emu2
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Old 04-30-2013, 01:55 PM   #20
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Pah! I bought a 10mb miniature winchester drive (hard drive to you lot) in the mid to late seventies. Company we bought it from could not figure out why anyone would ever want that much storage. Running CP/M, btw.

OLD technology not involving punched readers would be ferrite bead based memory arrays and some time later 8" single sided floppies.Used both of them AND solid state thermionic valves!!!
In the late seventies I was using DEC PDP11 computers that were I/O`d using little strips like diabetic test strips only they had magnetic tape on them!
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Old 04-30-2013, 03:06 PM   #21
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Quote:
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OLD technology not involving punched readers would be ferrite bead based memory arrays
In 1962 my wife an I lived across the hall from the manager of an IBM Center. We became good friends and after I kind of beat him up playing chess he asked if I'd be interested in becoming a programmer, heh heh at the time I didn't know what that was.

He took me up to the center, it was huge, it took the better part of a city block and basically handled all the banking records for many of the local and state wide banks. Row up-on row of tape machines and I think they were all 1/2 inch, all controlled by punch cards. I decided to give it a shot so he gave me all the tools, several books, cards, and the plastic tools for making the punch cards.

I actually dove in and started studying, quite seriously, it seemed pretty exciting but before I got very far my musical career kind of took over. I often wonder what might have happened if I'd have stuck with it.
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Old 05-01-2013, 01:21 AM   #22
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You would likely have wound up being one of countless unemployed fortran or cobol programmers!
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Old 05-02-2013, 03:55 PM   #23
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Originally Posted by MichaJo View Post
Those were the days...
I've started then with Cakewalk for Dos and here is my still working Wincake with notation ! (Cakewalk Professional for Windows 1.05)
Just Midi. No Audio.
I never used it in DOS, but I did in Windows for Workgroups. The version I had actually would let you insert one-shot audio events. It was clunky and difficult to line up and impossible to edit, but it was there.

My first sequencer was an Alesis MMT-8. I don't have the same one from back then, but I bought a used (black!) one a year ago.
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Old 05-02-2013, 05:58 PM   #24
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Just wondering... somebody mentioned a 10MB hard drive... At the dawn of ITB audio editing, how did people deal with space? I know a 5 minute Wav is about 60mb or so, so how did they do it? A lot of bouncing?
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Old 05-02-2013, 07:48 PM   #25
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Way back in the 70's, I was shitting in a diaper, most likely of the cloth and pin variety.
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Old 05-02-2013, 09:39 PM   #26
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I never used it in DOS, but I did in Windows for Workgroups. The version I had actually would let you insert one-shot audio events. It was clunky and difficult to line up and impossible to edit, but it was there.
Yes, the beginning of the end some would say, the merging of midi and audio. Should they have stayed separate? Still the audio incorporation in Cakewalk was clunky and hardly usable. CPUs and hard drives were still lagging behind but no worry.

Along came Creatives first AWE card. Our first ITB hardware sampler. A full length ISA card with onboard Simm ram and fully midi compatible at a price you could afford. (compared to an outboard sampler at the time it was peanuts) Once Ari Laakonnen wrote Esbeekay we could record entire pieces of audio and put them into Soundfonts as separate instruments and trigger those instead. We could keep them ITB for mix or record them on syncronised tape.
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Old 05-06-2013, 08:49 PM   #27
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I'd still love to find a copy of Cakewalk 3. It came on a floppy, and I remember how fast I became at composing MIDI drum and bass parts. I may still have that disc in a box full of old crap that I can't bring myself to throw away. Of course my new computer doesn't even have a floppy drive. Does anyone think it would even run on Windows7, 64-bit? Hahaha. I think I know the answer, but for the sake of nostalgia, I'd love to load it up and play around with it again!

Edward
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Old 05-25-2013, 04:28 AM   #28
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Funny to look back this way. I remember I had to equip my Commodore 64 and also the AMIGA with a self built MIDI Interface to start with that too. The concurrent ATARIs had that already on board.

The next thing was a Intel SX25 PC with a MOZART sound card and AMD with sound blaster AWE gold.

good old times
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Old 12-19-2015, 04:50 AM   #29
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I'd still love to find a copy of Cakewalk 3. It came on a floppy, and I remember how fast I became at composing MIDI drum and bass parts. I may still have that disc in a box full of old crap that I can't bring myself to throw away. Of course my new computer doesn't even have a floppy drive. Does anyone think it would even run on Windows7, 64-bit? Hahaha. I think I know the answer, but for the sake of nostalgia, I'd love to load it up and play around with it again!

Edward
4.0 (1992)
http://www.oldschooldaw.com/forums/i...hp?topic=506.0

3.0 (1989)
http://www.oldschooldaw.com/forums/i...p?topic=2390.0

id say go for 4.0 it has alot more interface driver support being from 1992..
and being rooted firmly in the IBM AT world as opposed to the XT world of the late 80s
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